WND Hypes Embalmer’s Dubious Story Of COVID Vaccine Blood Clots

Prolific COVID misinformer Art Moore wrote in a Feb. 13 WorldNetDaily article:

Amid indications from many different sources of a dramatic rise in the sudden onset of serious illnesses following COVID-19 vaccination, a veteran embalmer is reporting that he and more than a dozen colleagues in the industry have been noticing strange blood clots in most of their cases.

Richard Hirschman, with more than 20 years of experience in the funeral industry in Alabama, says that in mid-2021, he began noticing odd blood clots in arteries and lungs he had never seen before.

In an interview with Steve Kirsch, Hirschman said that last month, he found that 65% of his cases exhibited the clots. He told Kirsch that every one of the 15 people in the industry with whom he has spoken has observed the same alarming trend.

Kirsch is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who has applied his skills in data analysis to the pandemic, forming a group called the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation, where he serves as executive director.

Hirschman said that with only one exception, he hasn’t seen any cases in which the strange clots were seen in an unvaccinated person. The exception was an unvaccinated person who had received a transfusion.

Kirsch is also a prolific COVID misinformer, so what is being passed along here should be considered questionable at best — and, indeed it is. PolitiFact has noted that Hirschman has been making the rounds of COVID conspiracy operations with his tales, but argued that that the stories shouldn’t be treated as anything beyond anecdotal and definitely not authoritative:

The National Funeral Directors Association, a U.S. professional organization, told PolitiFact that embalmers in its network have noticed similar abnormalities in COVID-related deaths, but among both the vaccinated and unvaccinated. 

“It’s only anecdotal evidence, and there’s no scientific evidence to draw any conclusions,” said Jessica Koth, director of public relations for the association.

Embalmers typically do not know the vaccination status of those they are embalming, according to the experts PolitiFact spoke to. “It is not on the death certificate,” said Dr. Hari P. Close, national president of the National Funeral Directors & Morticians Association.

Politifact went on to explain that actual medical professionals — which Hirschman is not — point out that blood clots are linked to COVID itself, but not to most vaccines:

Experts we talked to say there’s something to the claim about a greater incidence of blood clots, but they dismiss the idea that it’s linked to the vaccines. What embalmers are noticing, they say, could well be the effects of COVID-19 infection itself, and those effects are occurring in people who are vaccinated and unvaccinated.

More than 900,000 people in the U.S., and nearly 5.8 million worldwide, have died of COVID-19 or related causes. This could explain why funeral home workers are encountering more bodies that show effects of a COVID-19 infection, which include blood vessel inflammation, damage to very small vessels, and blood clots.

Moore knew the PolitiFact fact-check was problematic, so it enlisted Kirsch’s help in trying to shout it down:

Politifact challenged Hirschman’s belief that the blood clots are caused by the vaccines. Fact checker Naseem Ferdowsi, who has no medical experience, Kirsch noted, said she was told by an embalmer in Phoenix, Arizona, that “dark clots have been found in COVID victims long before vaccinations were available.”

However, the clots Hirschman is observing are white fibrous material.

And Kirsch pointed out that the number of COVID deaths in Houston County, Alabama, where Richard works, is miniscule.

Moore didn’t address PolitiFact pointing out that the funeral directors group pointed out that enbalmers typcailly don’t know the vaccination status of the person they’re enbalming. Further, as a former “Silicon Valley entrepreneur,” Kirsch has no medical experience either.